The 2012 London Olympics - Page 7

Dear NBC,

 

You know what I really didn't need while watching the Olympics? The James Bond featurette that basically amounted to a long promo for Skyfall. IT'S THE OLYMPICS!!!! All I want you to do is show me sports. That's it. It's literally the easiest thing for you to do. Sure, if you want to sprinkle in a human interest story every now and then, I can live with that. I do not, however, need James F***ing Bonds in my F***ing Olympics coverage.

 

Sincerely,

- Every Sports Fan in America

It'd be one thing if it was a piece about the place of James Bond in England's culture.  You expect that sort of thing about the host country.  But yeah, that was pretty much, "HEY, NEW JAMES BOND MOVIE!"

 

And Michael Phelps must be sick of looking at Bob Costas by now.  How he's supposed to provide any kind of meaningful perspective to events that happened less than a week ago is beyond me.

If I ever hear that Philip Phillips Mumford & Sons soundalike song again after these Olympics I think I might do something terrible to a Starbucks.

Correct. I also believe Universal Sports Network (or whatever) falls under the "NBC Sports" umbrella. 

Haha

 

 

 

 

 

I love Maroney, but this is the risk you take putting specialists on the team. And call me petty, but I love that the two gymnasts that NBC hyped to oblivion (Jordyn and McKayla) "disappointed' (in the Michael Phelps definition of the word, to be fair) while Gabby just waltzed in and out with the most important medal in the sport despite all the talk of her being a headcase.

 

All the US All Around  Olympic Champions:

 

 

Is it too late to get Samuel L. Jackson a gig commentating on the Games? His Twitter is giving me life.

That's the crazy nature of gymnastics, particularly the event finals. There's not a lot of leeway, and its so easy for even great gymnasts to make big mistakes.

 

Still, that vault of hers in the team competition is still the moment of the Olympics for me so far. So jaw-droppingly perfect, and with that perfect exclamation mark of a landing to just completely drop your jaw.

 

By the way, mad props to the German gymnast still doing this at 37. That's crazy.

Can I just interrupt the NBC hatefest for a moment to point out that they are carrying competitions on...

 

NBC

MSNBC

CNBC

Bravo

NBC Sports Network

Telemundo

a dedicated Soccer Channel

a dedicated Basketball Channel

online - every single competition live

 

Yes, the Bond thing was basically a commercial for Skyfall, yes they goofed big time by spoiling Missy Franklin's gold medal performance, and yes they didn't see the Gabby Douglas train coming (no one did), but their coverage has been pretty good to this point, no worse than any Games prior.  I read that they spent over 1.1 billion dollars to purchase the broadcast rights, so I'm surprised we don't get 2 minutes of commercials for every minute of competition.  I will admit, I'm glad we can finally stop hearing about Michael Fucking Phelps every three seconds, though 18 golds and 22 medals almost justifies it.  Besides, I'd rather hear about him than Lochte, the douche who called his girlfriend at Beijing 2008 a "mistake."  Classy, dude.

Their online live option is buggy, often pixelated and randomly puts commercials at the worst times.

 

And there's no excuse to show the women's gymnastics events so late in the day when so many children are looking forward to them. At every single event, we struggle to keep all the kids awake ... it's ridiculous.

 

NO. NBC ARE EVILL.

 

But seriously. I only follow gymnastics every couple of years, and even I could figure that Gabby had a more than fighting chance for gold, especially since she beat Wieber during Trials. Plus any competent commentators would take notice Wieber's missed beam connections, and how they'd come back to bite her during international judging so, no, NBC doesn't get a pass there. Instead of essentially holding a funeral wake for Jordyn (perspective, much?) and bleating on about a rule that's actually benefited American gymnasts in the past, they could have highlighted the rest of the team. When the Jordyn vs. Gabby 'rivalry" fell apart, they had nothing prepared in the wings. Plus Aly Raisman wasn't near the dark horse many might have assumed.  

 

The issue with NBC is that their whole strategy is to hype a couple of athletes to oblivion and ignore their teammates, which is fucking annoying. I think the only thing I don't know about Phelps at this point is his blood type. Cullen Jones won his first individual medal of his career, but no gold= no medal ceremony in NBC's minds. 

 

And I feel bad for some of the flack Lochte's getting this cycle. The guy is a total idiot, but he's harmless and hilarious. I don't blame him for trying to make a name for himself out of Phelps' shadow, and if he's much more vi sable this Olympics I say get that endorsement money, dude. By many accounts Phelps was quite the douche in Baltimore, but nobody gives a damn when he's making history and bringing home the gold. 

Edited by Incognito - 8/5/12 at 9:46pm

 

30 different competitions involving 10,000+ athletes streamed live to millions of homes.  It going to be buggy.  And frankly, for most events there are no "good" times to put commercials.  McD's isn't paying tens of millions to NBC to get shafted on the ad front.  That's the price we, the viewers, pay for the access to all this content.  I'm sorry you have trouble keeping your kids awake for the gymnastics events.  That does suck, and they could do a better job of moving one of the glamor events earlier in the primetime broadcast.  But hey, they're also thinking "it's summer, school's out, kids are up later, and the vast majority of the audience is adults anyway."  And they have to deal with 4 time zones (not including AK and HI), so for every East Coaster complaining about late times, there's a West Coaster complaining about early times.  It's a no win for NBC.

 

 

Yes, Gabby won the trials, and everyone familiar with the US squad knew she had a chance to do well, but Wieber is the world champ and as thus was looked at as the favorite.  Gabby Douglas was the youngest American competitor and no one knew how she would respond to the huge Olympic stage.  NBC shouldn't even need a pass on that one.  Once Gabby produced, she got her due.  Broadcasters, CBS and ABC before, always hype up the "drama."  That's how you get people who don't know a roundoff from a pike from their own ass to pay attention to sports that get little attention most years.  Was the Wieber thing exploitative?  Hells to the fuck yeah.  Would anybody else cover it any differently?  Hells to the fuck no.

 

NBC hypes more than a couple of athletes.  We have a team of over 500 competitors.  We have dozens of medal contenders, dozens of gold medal contenders.  A guy like Cullen Jones isn't going to rate over Phelps, Lochte, Franklin, Soni, Hansen, or even Ledecky.  Sucks for him but we have a hella deep swim team and one silver medal ain't going to get you much television time (which, in fact, he did - on NBC, MSNBC, and NBC Sports Network throughout the swimming competition; he even got a twenty minute segment detailing his near drowning as a youth, his push to get more young black kids to swim, and his Olympic experiences).  While Phelps was busy partying his ass off and getting into minor trouble in Baltimore years ago, Lochte was dissing his ex, hinting at all the ass he was going to get at the Olympic Village, dissing Phelps, and walking around with a grill like it was 2002.  Sorry, but he's not hilarious to me and Phelps is nowhere near his level of douche.

 

Look, what people have to realize is that Olympic coverage on NBC is the same thing you would get on ABC, CBS, ESPN, and much better than you would get on the Fox Networks.  Is it perfect, no.  Is it deserving of as much scorn as it's been getting...no.

In Soviet Russia, tape delay show future.

 

If they can't handle the internet streams, then more reason to put this live in one of their channels. BTW, once the event happens, how about allowing us to replay it. They do this, but don't allow you to replay the events they're going to show in primetime.

 

As for the commercials, if you get a problem with the player and reload the page, you're hit with another intro commercial. It's not smart enough to know you've already watched one. Imagine a future where changing channels results in a watching a new commercial. Just because its a stream, we don't have to make the experience so horrible people.

 

As for the timezones, why not time delay the broadcast again for the west coast. It's not like showing these ahead in the east coast is causing huge spoilers, the news and results are all over the web. The whole thing doesn't make sense.

Oh and watching the gymanstics event now, the commercials actually interrupt the narrators. If they popup commercials in the middle of a routine I'm going to flip out!

 

Just make sure you stick the landing.

That fucking Lochte commercial where he's swimming to London...i swear the NBC livestream plays it every five minutes in an effort to drive me insane.

About Bolt, is it just me or is he the only sprinter who always looks like he could be going faster?

Back to NBC, and I possibly could be the only one with a gripe here, but the editing is so MTV generation/Speed Racer-on a speedball bender that I cannot appreciate these athletes and their accomplishments as much as I felt I was able to in years past.  The most egregious example was the Men's Hammer Throw last night.  I believe I saw the entirety of the "competition" in less than thirty seconds from qualifying to medaling.  Ferfuckssake give me some perspective on what these people have been trying to accomplish all their lives.

Not only that, but he's the only one who doesn't appear to be winded after a race. The man is unbelievable.

 

Many of those events are live on television.  But there are only so many events you can show live on tv at one time.  They have 8 different television channels.  That's eight live events - a great selection - but not going to cover every event taking place at any one time.  No broadcaster in the world is covering every event live on television.  That's just the reality of the enormity of the Olympics.  An option to replay completed events is available for most sports - in fact, looking at the NBC site it appears all completed events have a "watch replay" option, so I'm not sure which events you're having difficulty accessing.  Again, the commercials are just something we're going to have to deal with.  Sponsors shell out tens of millions to advertise, and they're not going to let us "get around" watching commercials by watching online streams.  The reality is we probably are heading towards a future where you have to watch a commercial every time you change the channel.  Sometimes technology sucks balls.

 

Previous Olympics have delayed events for the West Coast and ABC and NBC got ripped to shreds by people complaining about East Coasters spoiling the results.  And that was before the rise of Facebook and Twitter.  The main reason some swimming and gymnastics is televised so late in the East is so the West Coasters can get home from work.  10pm gymnastics for us is 7pm gymnastics for them.  If I'm in Cali, I'd hate it if Gabby Douglas was on at 7pm/8pm Eastern and 4pm/5pm Pacific.  It's a terrible balancing act with no right answer.

 

We're talking about showing the most popular events on live television, which are the ones they're withholding. This is not a problem at all of not having enough channels, you should know that. Actually while they're not airing some of these popular events, they have almost dead air to cover in some cases and show repeats on the other channels.

 

 

 

They don't offer the replay option for the events they're delaying. I'm not sure if you're getting this or not, but the whole idea is to restrict and delay access for those things they're going to show in primetime. Check now, the list for gymnastic today doesn't have the replay option.

 

 

 

This is not a technical problem at all, just NBC being lazy. There are many ways to get around this, but it has to be pointed out how little effort they're putting on the user experience. Having people defend that is really bizarre. And saying that because of technology that's the future is ridiculous, there's no reason why the commercials can't be triggered all at the same time. It's trivial.

 

 

 

Aren't they already showing these events on the different timezones at different times, that is they start at 8PM in each respective timezone?

 

The whole point of them putting gymnastics at 11:00pm-12:00am is to milk the ratings, not for the reasons you are citing.

On a lighter note, check out this girl check Bolt out.

 

Props to the Swiss synchronized swimming duo for performing their routine to the INCEPTION trailer music.  

 

Yeah, I watch synch swimming.  Problem with that???

 

Did anyone see that Chinese swimmer who finished his race and then had time to dry off, grab a drink and read the front page before the other swimmers finished?  Holy cow.  He's being coached by an Australian guy.

The thing with the tape delay is that there's no evidence I'm aware of that showing the events live would significantly affect the ratings at night. If people are watching despite having the results widely known and the events being shown live on the internet, who says most of them wouldn't watch even if the events were on live TV as well? 

 

I tried to watch the 100m live, but the streaming died every 5 seconds. Awesome. I ended up just skipping it live and delayed. Thanks NBC!

 

I despise that the events I've been following live are now headed for their finals, which NBC will surely delay and chop to hell. I'll probably end up skipping all of them.

Their App doesn't let you watch if you're not a cable subscriber. How is that fair, or even legal? The government has allowed NBC to use the public airwaves. You don't need cable to watch NBC, but you do if you want to watch the games live? In other countries the Olympics are treated as a current events story and are reported as news. Here it is a reality show being sold to consumers, as an article someone here linked to so aptly put it.

 

But wait ... their website and their apps DO NOT show the NBC broadcast streaming, which is ridiculous. This is probably because of local affiliates and their ads. So yeah, they only stream their cable content, I don't think there's a stream for their broadcast.

 

The other piece of fail, to prove that you're a cable subscriber you have to use your cable subscription id and password. Most people I know don't even know what this is, I forgot what mine is because I stopped using ISP provided email ages ago (since I moved to gmail). I'm trying to imagine my mom trying to login to this webpage and giving up on the whole effort since she has no idea what this login is (and sometimes they have the ISP provided email in case you forgot your username, which again many don't use)

Don't forget Comcast owns NBC.  "Free" TV is supported by advertising--in England, the viewers pay for the television there, so they have to answer to their viewers (I think someone else made this point already).  NBC/Comcast answers to advertisers with ratings.  Which, even though we're all complaining, they continue to pull in.

 

My wife had a similar response about the login when she tried to watch on her laptop--"Dish login and password?  How the hell am I supposed to know that?"  Luckily I was sitting next to her at the time, so I filled her in on the info, to which she responded, "Well that's just bullshit that I have to sign in with that."

Damn it, this USA vs Canada game is going to give me heart attack!!!!

The last 2 womens soccer matches I watched they score in the final minute of extra time to win.  They have no quit.  And I think the mens team wishes they had a passer like Rapione. 

 

And Alex Morgan is mighty cute.  Way better than Solo.

 

Sacrilege!

 

Man what a game, and I think the US played better but boy oh boy did the ref help us. That 6 minute and penalty calls were really questionable, and I'm sure the Canadians will have a lot to talk about back home.

 

I'll co-sign this.  Solo has that annoying reedy voice.  Alex Morgan has a young Jennifer Capriati-thing going on that I find appealing.  

 

Hope who?

 

I dunno, Canada twice led the game, then coughed up a lead. Tough break with that handball. But I feel sorry for Christine Sinclair. 3 goals in one game, pretty much carried the team on her shoulders, but the team came up short.

Nah, she's very cute but Solo seems way hotter for me.

 

The Canadians did amazing, and you could argue they would have won without that questionable call. But it just seemed to me like the US dominated the ball for most of the game.

 

And that corner goal, just great stuff! I really thought this was going to penalties.

 

I can't speak for all timezones, but the NBC broadcast is on at 8PM PST here.

Man that Canada loss to the US in soccer today was a heartbreaker for me, and all Canadians I'm sure. So close

 

8pm EST for me. 

It's the only event I've watched in its entirety, but holy shit Russia's uneven bats performance was astounding. Like Ivan Drago levels of astounding. The way she just smoked everyone was pretty incredible--and then landed perfectly.

 

Also read that the super crazy twist she did at the end is a move that was named after her--she freaking invented it. Mind boggling, what some of these athletes can do.

 

I want to see this event.  

The Russian WAS good, but holy shit that British chick...the release moves that she did were astounding.  If she had stuck the landing, she would have had gold.

The delightfully named Beth Tweddle.
 

That's awful to see for Liu Xiang.  Two Olympics in a row he is undone by injuries.

The streaming is even worse today, where's that guy that was defending NBC? Please come back, I feel like beating somebody up!

NBC is delaying everything until prime time on both coasts.  So no, LA isn't seeing stuff live at 5pm their time.  They're having to wait until 8pm PDT.

Holy shit on Aly Raisman today. If you didn't see it live/streaming, try to see her floor exercise tonight. She won the gold for good reason. Also, she finally WON a tie breaker and got bronze in balance beam. She had a great day.

Mysterious disappearances plague Cameroon's Olympic bid: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-19167033

They aren't that mysterious, though. They just don't want to go home.

I'm sure that's probably what happened, but from the article at least as of now their whereabouts are unknown. They just vanished.

The full routine for the Russian synch swimming duo that incorporates "Suspiria" and "Sleepy Hollow" is crazy good.  It manages to be ridiculous, creepy and incredibly impressive all at the same time.  Which pretty much describes the entire synch swimming universe.  

 

 

 

You!  You!  I know you!

For ElCap...